


A Weekend in the City

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossdressing, Cute Immortal Husbands, Lipstick & Lip Gloss, M/M, Makeup, Mission Fic, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:21:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26670574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: Then, from the lone seat at the table, "You're an excellent sniper, Boss," Nicky tells her, and she frowns, saying, "Not as good as you," andoh, all right, Joe knows where this is going, but he doesn't have confirmation yet, verbal confirmation worth more than his accelerating heart.(Inspired bythis incredible piece of art.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 55
Kudos: 255





	A Weekend in the City

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bloc Party.

So definitively does Nile blow her cover, Joe is surprised they can't see it happening from one of those orbiting satellites. It would be kind of funny, were it not for how screwed they probably are now, because, of course, there's absolutely no way that Andy is going to infiltrate anything, the risk of a stray bullet finding a target too great.

Their headquarters are doubling as Nicky's nest, about twenty square metres of a bedroom and barely a quarter of that of a bathroom across the street from the Marriott, as high up as a townhouse can provide them, the owners away in the country for the weekend. Not ideal, but, then again, this was never meant to be more than a clean assassination with an easy decoy. Now it's turned into a salvage mission where a quarter of their team has been discovered, through no fault of Nile's, who was at the time meeting Copley in Islington of all places.

They've been particularly careful about keeping the windows of the actual mezzanine blocked and the lights on at all times, so as to give the impression that the owners have left them on by mistake. They've done the actual reverse for the hallway lavatory, the window unbarred and the room in pitch darkness. It's likely they'll discover the ruse after the fact, but, by the time they do, it won't matter anymore.

Half of the invitation is under the name Nil Libre, which is somehow both better and worse than Joseph Jones. She was meant to accompany him as a guest and change into staff uniform later. Deliver a telephone message. Lead the mark close to a window overlooking Park Street. The mark's security team spotting her across town shouldn't have made a difference, except for how she apparently used to go to high school with one of them, their eyes locking, the guy nodding in her direction before leading their mark to a waiting towncar to return to Mayfair.

The way Nile tells it, a little subdued yet matter-of-fact, only serves to frustrate Andy more. To be fair, it's already early afternoon, the party that night, their plans currently uncertain. Joe's brain scrambles a little for anything other than waiting for the guy to check out tomorrow and taking him out on the pavement between the hotel front doors and his car, but they won't risk a crowd. None of them will, not anymore.

In a way, this has the potential to escalate from bad to the literal worst, such as questions about Nile's not being dead cropping up all over the internet in the wake of their chance meeting. Copley assured them an hour ago that nothing has pinged on that front and his continued monitoring of the situation, which they take at face value, mostly because stressing over someone reaching out to Nile's family with awkward questions bound to snowball into an awkward lack of adequate answers is the least of their worries right now.

"The world sure is a small place," Joe comments, shaking his head and toeing at the carpeting. It's kind of not, unless you're them.

"We'll get Copley working on another invite for you," Andy sighs towards Joe, Nile typing updates for Copley's benefit on whatever the four of them are currently coming up with on the spot in terms of a makeshift strategy, "but the plan's changed." It hangs in the air, the _into what, exactly?_

They're all well-aware of the obvious option. Joe can try playing the decoy instead, of course, but he might have to fight his way out through a dozen pissed-off ex-members of various militarised compounds currently acting as personal security goons, and that's sans cover. Presumably, Nile could have faced a similar scenario, but Joe doubts that their boss getting his brains blown after Joe led him to a secluded part of the building will buy him any sympathy or credibility points enough to make his way out on his own. He's never been particularly good at acting the shocked bystander. And solo missions? Not his forte.

Then, from the lone seat at the table, "You're an excellent sniper, Boss," Nicky tells her, and she frowns, saying, "Not as good as you," and _oh_ , all right, Joe knows where this is going, but he doesn't have confirmation yet, verbal confirmation worth more than his accelerating heart.

"Copley is asking for an identity for the new reservation," Nile points out, laptop next to her in the middle of the cot bed.

Andy makes a _go ahead_ gesture, and Joe watches Nicky briefly bite the corner of his mouth consideringly. "Tell him... Joe's current UK passport and another under Nicky Smith. Or, ah, switch the y to an i at the end."

"Uh," Nile says and blinks, but Joe watches her face rearrange itself as she wordlessly types a response, then a few more words on both sides of the conversation in the chat screen follow, then she closes the laptop with a click before glancing around the room expectantly, though obviously Andy's shrug doesn't provide any answers.

Finally, she asks, "Is this an impromptu honey trapping scenario? Or am I reading this completely wrong?"

Nicky doesn't stare anyone down, but Joe can't help noticing that, even as he's looking from Andy to Nile and briefly to Joe on his way to circling back to Andy, he's barely blinking, eyes firm, back a little stiff. "I'll play bait, yes," he finally pronounces.

Besides being old hat at this, Andy simply doesn't care. However, Nile is an unknown quantity. They all watch as she shrugs, and Nicky's shoulders relax infinitesimally.

"Shopping trip for you, then. And a make-up counter. I have mascara you can use and a lipstick that won't match you, but the rest... not so much. _And_ another invitation pick-up," she adds, pointing at the closed laptop, "in half an hour."

Nodding, Nicky wordlessly rises and leaves the room, presumably for the shower judging by his footsteps down the corridor and the subsequent creaking down the stairs.

"We don't have a lot of time," Andy points out.

Sighing, Joe makes his way downstairs to another part of the house containing the nice washroom they've all been using in the daytime, the window not having any manner of cover at all, improvising not really an option. The door is closed and he hears the sink running, so he knocks and waits for Nicky to open up, which he does promptly, toothbrush hanging off the side of his mouth.

Nodding towards the shower stall, he explains, "I'd like to join you."

"Good. We don't have a lot of time," Nicky echoes Andy's words.

They're both right. While Joe brushes his teeth, Nicky fiddles with the faucets and adjusts the temperature to his liking, although never hot enough for _Joe's_ liking, then they both step inside. It's beyond perfunctory as they take turns beneath the spray of water, Joe's brain running in circles throughout. It's the most efficient shower they've had together for a while. That is, one not involving washing blood or the like from unfortunate places. At one point, they turn to each other at the same time, Nicky passing the soap back, eyes locking, and Joe gets a reassuring smile he didn't know he needed. Feels his body relaxing into the certainty of _them_ , the same feeling he's felt while looking at Nicky for over nine hundred years now.

Once done, they put their clothes back on and find Andy and Nile on the stairs, waiting.

Funnily enough, they all veto Harrods.

They find a far more agreeable department store where Nicky can get his make-up done on the spot, even as Nile laments the lack of a Sephora, which has Joe quirking an eyebrow until Nile says something about the principle of the matter and girls in her high school, which is vaguely adorable though lacking in a reference point from which Joe can commiserate. She does lead Joe away to help with purchasing the rest of what Nicky needs, which isn't ideal given that they've got just about enough time to buy a semi-tailored dress based on measurements alone and a wig Nicky can't even pick himself.

"I wish Andy hadn't taken the car," Nile sighs.

"Efficiency," he reminds her, but she still looks displeased until she spots a store that's finally to her liking.

It turns out, they have just the thing, in Nicky's size and everything. The length will barely count as evening on his frame, but Joe likes the double lining, presumably for the purposes of acting as a built-in slip and providing some extra structure.

Finding a store which sells quality wigs proves to be an actual hardship. When they finally do, Nile baulks at the prices, but Joe knows good work when he sees it. He's almost sad they didn't think to stop by their main safe house in Milan, but sometimes it's about making do. He picks out a straight style that comes down below the shoulders to about mid-back, a little fringe, a good match for Nicky's natural colouring.

On returning with their haul, they don't find him at the make-up counter. Luckily, they get pointed in the right direction by the artist they left him with, and they meet him a few minutes later as he seems to be on his way back, a bulky shopping bag by his side.

Lifting it slightly, he says simply, "Shoes." The nails on both hands are a peachy-pink shade, only a millimetre or two longer than they were when they left him.

"Ugh. Right. Forgot about those," Nile says with a frown.

Joe's only paying the bare minimum of attention for his brain to register the exchange, because, well, purple and gold shouldn't go that well together, surely, but, somehow, they're doing something lovely and magical across Nicky's eyelids. His mouth is shiny with a gloss that's more or less his own lip's colour, only perhaps sparklier, catching the light in bits and pieces. He keeps licking at it. Joe keeps watching him do it.

Andy buzzes them on Nile's disposable phone less than a minute later to tell them she's got the new invitation and she's waiting outside. It's already darkening out by the time they get back to the townhouse. In that time, Nicky's managed to lick away most of the shine off his mouth and Joe's bitten his bottom lip raw while watching him do it in the rear-view mirror.

Thankfully, Nicky has his own shaving paraphernalia, the only one out of the four of them who carries anything like that around, which saves them another trip. Convenience and swiftness translate to Nicky forgoing any of the extras or risking the bathrooms, and simply plugging the electric razor into the outlet farthest away from the bedroom window and making headway as efficiently as a dry shave permits.

The bedroom overhead lights aren't exactly floodlights, but the room is small and the ceiling is low and Nicky is in his underwear under a warm Tungsten glow. Joe squirms. The dress is hanging in its bag on the back of the closed bedroom door.

He startles more than he'd like to admit when Nile touches at his shoulder to pass him his own garment bag. She may or may not be smirking, but she definitely rolls her eyes at him on her way back to ignoring everyone for the sake of whatever's on her laptop screen. In another corner of the room, Andy is already assembling the rifle. With a sigh, Joe starts undressing.

His eyes land on one of Nicky's favourite 9mm Luger lying on the bed, sixteen rounds, its holster discarded and a slim thigh harness with its own much slimmer holster attached. He's reminded he's going inside unarmed, the dress accommodating one gun and one gun only, unless Nicky wants to explain a gun-shaped item protruding from it. Either that, or coming up with a good cover story for why it sounds like two guns brushing together whenever he takes a step.

Technically, neither of them should have a reason to fire at all. Joe focuses on dressing instead of running through possible contingency plans and the likelihood of all of them going sideways in the worst ways possible.

He's adjusting the knot on his bowtie when he hears, "Zip me up?" from behind him.

Upon turning around, his breathing doesn't stop as such, but it staggers for an instant, air stumbling around his chest.

Nicky's staring at him over the crest of his shoulder, one hand holding his now much longer hair back from his neck while the other is keeping the two sides of the dress together where the zipper should stop just below the knob of his spine. He's got on a pair of tiny white-gold teardrop earrings, probably clip-ons. But Joe's eyes narrow in on his mouth. He's wearing actual lipstick now, a deep shade of red.

Nile was right, he thinks a little hysterically; that shade isn't _quite_ right.

No one will care.

Because the dress is a shiny off-white, and, after the zip is in place and Nicky thanks him, he turns to face Joe fully, and he finally gets a good look at the structure of the bodice, the plunging neckline, the shape of Nicky's legs in the open-toed heels he's bought himself. His toenails are the same colour as that on his hands.

Although his eyelids are drooping just the slightest bit and his lips are parted enough Joe can see the edges of his top teeth between them, Nicky's expression is carefully blank. Andy calls him away, and he turns to glide smoothly from one end of the room to the other. Joe adjusts the crotch on his trousers.

This couldn't have been easy, could it?

**Author's Note:**

> *incoherent author noises*
> 
> Kudos and/or comments greatly appreciated. You do you, though! *finger-guns*
> 
> Tumblr: [rhubarbdreams](https://rhubarbdreams.tumblr.com/)


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